30 January 2012

As you may have heard, Ford has ended production of the venerable Crown Victoria, the mainstay vehicle of American police and taxi fleets for decades.

The Crown Vic assembly line shut down last September, so we found ourselves wondering: What will replace the Crown Victoria in the California Highway Patrol's fleet? Hoping to find an answer, we dropped by the CHP's Fleet Operations facility in West Sacramento, California last weekend, hoping to see what the CHP has purchased now that the Crown Vic is no more.

On one level, our visit was a failure: Instead of finding the CHP's replacement vehicle -- the Interwebs say the Dodge Charger is a likely candidate -- we instead discovered that the CHP is hoarding hundreds of Crown Victorias for future use. (Notice that the ones in the background still have the manufacturer's inventory stickers displayed on the windows.)

But as metaphor, the trip was a stunning success. We happened to arrive in West Sacramento at dusk, just as a firey sunset was exploding in the sky behind the CHP's motor pool parking lot. It was oddly beautiful.

There are still be plenty of Crown Vics on hand at the California Highway Patrol. But no more are coming, and the demise of the type is now a question of when and not if. Sunset, indeed.

Comments

Ha.. I remember back around 1986 I lived in downtown LA in the artist's loft district, there were tons of empty parking lots in the area between there and Skid Row. One day I was walking near my loft and I noticed one of the lots was full of new Crown Vics with LAPD colors but no lights. Over the next few weeks, more and more lots filled up with Crown Vics, there were hundreds of them. Pretty soon, the whole area was covered with new cop cars. I thought that was pretty funny because the area was notorious for vehicle break-ins. Everyone I knew drove beaters so they wouldn't be a conspicuous target. One person I knew even took her car battery inside every night, since it got stolen so often. My own '65 beater got stolen, it was abandoned without the battery. That was the strategy, to have a car that was so crappy there was nothing to steal in it.
Well anyway, thanks for the memories, it's been a long time since I saw rows and rows of parked Crown Vics.